The Alibi's Ridiculously Short Fiction Contest

By Steven Robert Allen

We live in a lazy sound-bite culture. With each passing year, Americans demand that their lives become a little bit faster, a little bit simpler, a little bit easier. Jello Biafra once said, "Give me convenience or give me death," and this really is our new sacred patriotic creed. It's central to every aspect of our hurly-burly, Internet-and-latte lives, even here in slow, laid-back New Mexico. Wouldn't Patrick Henry be proud?

First Place

A broken cup of a girl, shocked numb and colorblind, rattled through cold tunnels of unpopulated perception, free of the weight even of dreams. That was after the Moonies, after the deprogramming. In the house with boards nailed over the windows, they had cracked her open, mopped up the spill. They tossed away her chill dark mornings singing ’Arirong' by the sea, carnations sold on street corners, praying in tongues. For a moment, I thought she might not have heard me. "Yeah, OK. I'll marry you," she finally allowed, her pale wafer-thin smile queer under the mercury vapor moon.

Museum of International Folk Art

Enjoy the first large-scale museum exhibition dedicated to tramp art since 1975. More than 150 examples of tramp art, concentrating on works from the United States, with additional international examples.

Tractor Brewing Taproom

New Mexico Humanities Council

Award-winning documentary filmmaker and fine-art photographer Miguel Gandert shows his work highlighting his mestizaje heritage, and the fusion and tension of the relationship between Spanish Colonial and Native Cultures of the Americas. Runs through 12/29.